Jon Stewart investigates the Australian gun control “failure” (video)

Jon Stewart looks at the failure of background check legislation in the US Senate by having Jon Oliver look at effective gun control in Australia.

Of course, the gun advocate says Australia isn’t the “real world” and is akin to “going to Planet X.” Of course, Oliver got the gun nut to shut up when the gun nut said laws don’t work, look at the war on drugs. So Oliver replied, so we shouldn’t have any laws restricting drugs because drug laws don’t work? Gun nut was speechless.

Oliver, incredibly, got to sit down with the Australian Prime Minister who got gun control passed in Australia.

Chris in Paris
An American in Paris, France. BA in History & Political Science from Ohio State. Provided consulting services to US software startups, launching new business overseas that have both IPO’d and sold to well-known global software companies. Currently launching a new cloud-based startup. Full bio here.

Straight from your government. Assault has been increasing steadily
since the ’96 gun buyback and overall homicide spiked in an asymptotic
upward curve until 2002 when the “changes in police policy and
attitudes” were implemented by government ( http://www.aic.gov.au/publicat… ) and officers then cracked down on the violence unleashed by this failed policy.

Abraham – I am an Australian with over 20 years of experience in the national media. You are not only talking absolute and utter horseshit about a country you know nothing about – I would also question your sanity. Your “arguments” are delusional , false and the mark of a man with very little grip on reality.
I would challenge you to show your sources and any statistical data for your ludicrous claims that “the buyback made Australia a less safer place to live.” Please cite your sources for your other horseshit as well.
I won’t be holding my breath. You have no sources. The data doesn’t exist. Every time people an American like you smears your insane gun mentality across my country your drag down your entire nation. You don’t just degrade yourself – you degrade the United States of America.

Abraham Collins

That’s nice, but I know you’ve cherry picked the statistics already. Just like Piers Morgan you’ll get blue in the face claiming murder rates “WITH GUNS” went down. That’s true but murder is murder, and overall murder increased immediately after the gun buyback.

carwoolaman

There a name we use in Australia for statements like that – 8 letters 2 concatenated words first word starts with b second with s. we generally call the person making the said statement a name that which starts with w includes a n and k and ends in r.

While homocides did increase (and with a growing population that is expected) the number that truly matters is the homocide rate, which has remained virtually the same with a slight dip after the gun buy back program in 1997.

Also, Australians were never given a constitutional right to own guns in the first place, and so few even owned guns before 1997.

Your numbers don’t paint an accurate or realistic picture of what is really happening. Either you don’t know that you are misrepresenting the facts, or you know that the numbers don’t paint the full picture and are intentionally saying whatever you have to to “win.”

Thanks! We cannot forget to repeat this OVER AND OVER to refocus the claims made by the NRAer McGoos that what they have their guns for is “self-protection”. It could be that the McGoos are still afraid of you-know-who’s.

I like Australia and Canada a lot. We would reduce a lot of our troubles in the US by emulating a lot of what these two (and other) countries are doing.

UncleBucky

Ah that was a good episode, especially when the interviewer said, “Right.” to the statement by the idiot NRAer that with more guns, there are gonna be more deaths.

Right. ;o)

George Mason

Why don’t you substitute “black man” for “gun nut”, and “NAACP” for “NRA” as see what a stupid bigot your are? Or is it OK to stereotype and bash groups you disagree with?

George Mason

No, the concept of a militia was for the common defense and protection against tyranny. You do know that gun control was started to keep guns from freed slaved? And also the NRA stood up for the rights of freed slaves to bear arms?

David Shanahan

Again, prove it, don’t just claim it.

David Shanahan

Please quote your source(s) for these stats. Anyone can quote unsourced numbers, if you want to be taken seriously tell us where you got them from.

Abraham Collins

You don’t need to compare Australia to any other country. Just compare Australia of 1996 to Australia of 1998. Australia of 1998 had murders increased by 19%, home invasions increased by 21%, assaults committed increased by 28%, armed robberies skyrocketed with an increase of 69%.

Jon

Well all countries have very different means of compiling violent crime data. The FBI has a very narrow list of what it counts as “violent crime” as opposed to England, Canada and Australia. Though nearly impossible to get all of the statistics measured in the same way, most hypothesize that our “true violent crime” rate is a good deal higher than the afore-mentioned countries.

The homocide rate IS, however, possible to compare (as our means of gathering this information is virtually identical to other countries) and the U.S. is almost 5x higher than Australia, England and Canada. As well as many other countries.

Abraham Collins

Again, more people were murdered AFTER the Australian gun ban.

spec9

So it is OK that more people get killed as long as you get to protect your wallet?

spec9

John Oliver nailed that piece so hard that the pro-gun guy has got to be hanging his head in shame.

Aidan Walt

John Stewart might need to watch out for his job

George Mason

I should add, that although crime has dropped in Aust., it has dropped a rate no faster that it was dropping prior to the laws were enacted.

samisdat
So from your sources, it is still debatable that gun control laws did not make things worse in Australia, but let us assume that it did not make crime go up. But what is not in debatable is gun control did not make Australia safer. Since making it safer was the goal, and the goal was not accomplished the effort was a failure.

Abraham Collins

That’s okay. The facts are readily available for you to observe; go look it up.

samizdat

You either lie or misrepresent facts. But I’ll go with just fucking stupid.

samizdat

For the gun nuts (not that you’ll believe facts, even if they do come from Australia[ns]):

Look folks, the Second Amendment was put into the constitution (State Militia) to allow Plantation Owners to call on the power of the state … to HUNT DOWN AND KILL OR RETURN THEIR PERSONAL PROPERTY KNOWN AS SLAVES!

Contrary to what you are taught, there were many rebellions on these plantations and initially slave owners were wiped out, their homes set ablaze and their slaves ran up North.

Most of the framers of the constitution HAD SLAVES (Jefferson for instance) and did not really believe that all men were “created equal”. During the “ratification process” of the U.S. Constitution the state of Virginia had concerns that the federal government would abolish or directly interfere with the slave system. The Southern states had made it plain that they would not join the Union if emancipation was an open issue and insisted that the Constitution protect the slave system.

The instinct among Northerners was to emancipate slaves while Southerners tended to want to deport them. This was not principally due to a more extreme racism in the South but to a legitimate fear about what would happen if it loosened its tight control over a black population that had long suffered horrible cruelties (oh, probably kill “massa” in his sleep).

Virginia was a state living in perpetual fear. Fully forty-four percent of Virginia’s total population was black, and in some areas, particularly in the eastern part of the state, blacks constituted the majority. Whites were ever mindful that if the right opportunity presented itself, blacks might cut their heads off.

“Slavery was not only an economic and industrial system,” one scholar noted, “but more than that, it was a gigantic police system. Everyone in the South knew the story of the Stono Rebellion; it was the largest and best known of the slave insurrections. It was not, however, the only slave rebellion. One researcher identified about 250 rebellions or conspiracies involving at least ten slaves.

Over time the South developed an elaborate system of slave control. The basic instrument of control was the slave patrol, armed groups of white men who made regular rounds. The patrols made sure that blacks were not wandering where they did not belong, gathering in groups, or engaging in other suspicious activity (like reading or writing). The basic strategy was to ensure and impress upon the slaves that whites were armed, watchful, and ready to respond to insurrectionist activity at all times. The state required white men and female plantation owners to participate in the patrols and to provide their own arms and equipment …. THUS THE MILITA. Virtually all able-bodied white men were part of the militia, which primarily meant that they had slave control duties under the direction and discipline of the local militia officers.

The militia was the first and last protection from the omnipresent threat of slave insurrection or vengeance. The War for Independence had placed the South in a precarious position: sending the militia to the war against the British would leave Southern communities vulnerable to slave insurrection. The Southern states, therefore, often refused to commit their militia to the Revolution, reserving them instead for slave control.

After the war, the militia remained the principal means of protecting the social order and preserving white control over an enormous black population. Anything that might weaken this system presented the gravest of threats. The South’s fear that the North might destabilize the slave system weakening white control over the slave population gave anti-Federalists a powerful weapon.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1355224588 Nicholas A Kocal

This gun nut is a complete and total lying douche bag. This is why the NRA and their supporters have blood on their hands.

Abraham Collins

Except that violent crime, home invasions and murder increased at unprecedented rates after the gun ban. As long as it wasn’t done with a gun that makes it better right? We can have murder but heaven forbid we have any “gun murder.”

The buyback made Australia a less safe place to live.

cambridgemac

Wow. You can’t make up this stuff.

Poor gun nut. The only foreign countries that Merkans consider to be real (as in Real Men, what else could “real” mean?) are Israel and Australia….. And now the Aussies have to be airbrushed out of Wingnuttia and relocated to Planet X or another galaxy. Or Eurasia, which we have always been at war with.

Dave of the Jungle

Yes!

http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

Semi-off topic: I think John Oliver is going to be a terrific guest host when Jon goes on his movie-making leave of absence this summer.